


Acts of Defiance

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Ai no Kusabi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-22
Updated: 2005-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:17:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for silverr</p>
    </blockquote>





	Acts of Defiance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for silverr

 

 

_Beloved._

Smoke filled his lungs, but a cool voice filled his mind.

_Better. Breathe._

He struggled to open his swollen eyes, panic filling the ever-calm spaces in his mind. His legs, his legs were gone.

But he could feel his legs, burning more than the rest of his flesh. When he managed, solely through the brutal force of his will, to lift his head and look down, he saw them there, bloody and mangled, yet still attached to his body by some miracle.

_No miracle, beloved. Me._

His head fell back and he looked up into the bright face of Jupiter. The pain receded.

_Only me._

He opened his mouth and let out a grunting noise, hoarse and croaking, so unbecoming to a Blondie. But it was what was in his mind that Jupiter could hear, and his mind held only one word.

_Riki._

Jupiter's serene expression did not change - it never changed - but Iason felt the cold wave of disapproval. The bright face shimmered away and the pain roared back, ripping hot into his body and mind.

Another face appeared in his wavering field of vision, sad and stern. "It turns out that you truly are as indispensable as you think you are," Raoul said as he bent over him. "Tanagura is not ready to without its top Blondie. Neither is Jupiter."

He croaked again, summoned his voice to obey him until finally he rasped out the only two syllables he could focus on. "Riki."

Raoul's face drew tight with pity and anger. "How far that mongrel brought you down. Until now, I denied the extent of it."

Iason did not care about Raoul's approval or disapproval, less now than ever before. He struggled to speak again, to make understood all the questions that were now racing through his mind. If he were alive, then Riki might also still live, pulled from the wreckage of Dana Bahn and saved before he could sacrifice his life at Iason's side as he had intended.

But Raoul passed his fingertips across Iason's lips, silencing him. "You need never to say his name or think of him again. Forgive me, my friend. I did not want to do this."

He struggled to move, to put out a hand and stop Raoul, but he no longer had the strength even to raise his head. Raoul lifted his own hand, a small round device on his finger: a mind tampering device. Iason knew their use well, though he had deftly avoided becoming a victim of them himself, until now.

He struggled harder, but nothing obeyed him now, not his limbs, not his mind, not Raoul. All he could do in the end was cling to the image of Riki, taking a long drag on the Black Moon cigarette, so beautiful in that final moment of their doom, the final moment of Riki's surrender. Every other image, ever other memory of his Pet, his beloved dark Riki, faded away behind the walls that Raoul was building in his mind. Every moment of their three years together slowly vanished, until even the name he held like a talisman dissolved like so much smoke. _Riki._

It was gone.

He fell back against the surgical table, unaware of how his body had arched up in the first place. Panting, he blinked up slowly at his best friend, who watched him impassively. "What...?" he managed to whisper, but could get out no more than that.

"Rest," Raoul said simply. "When you wake, everything will be as it was. As it should have been."

Unconsciousness rose fast around him. He frowned, fighting against the sleep his body craved. He needed to remember something, but what or why, he could not have said.

Then Jupiter was there, touching his face, soothing him with words his dulled mind could not decipher.

_Did you think you could escape me so easily, my Pet?_

* * *

"A toast to the inimitable Iason Mink!" The businessman from one of the far moons raised his glass, an overly familiar grin gaping in his fat face.

Iason hated him, as he hated most of the people around him these days, but he merely inclined his head and raised his glass in a return salute. Beside him, Raoul watched over him, ever the nursemaid since Iason had recovered from the assassination attempt some weeks ago.

"Ever the idol to us all," said the businessman's companion, as ill-dressed and ill-mannered as his colleague. "We all want to emulate him - why, just this morning, my friend here bought himself a mongrel Pet."

"Excuse us, please," Raoul said before Iason could react beyond a frown. "We will see you at dinner, I hope."

The businessmen rose and bowed as the Blondies left the table. Raoul touched Iason's arm and murmured in his ear as they exited the room. "Forgive my interference, but they are crass, and I can only stand so much of them in one sitting. If it weren't for their money and their rich connections, I'd advise you to have them take out and beaten as an example."

"Bad taste is not, regrettably, a crime yet in Tanagura," Iason replied mildly. The man's remark about mongrel Pets bothered him, both in its insulting strangeness and on some other level he could not identify. It was a discomfiting feeling, and Raoul the ever-watchful saw his face and frowned.

"You are still too tense," he noted and touched Iason's arm again. "Come with me. I have a surprise."

Iason followed his friend without comment back to the luxurious flat Raoul occupied next to Iason's own at the top of the most exclusive building in Midas. They entered and Raoul waved off his Furniture, leading Iason straight back to one of the bedrooms he kept for his Pets.

An observation lounge ringed the lowered space occupied by a wide bed. Two Pets lounged on the pure white sheets, lovely boys of the perfect age, one green haired and one blue. They looked up at their master's entrance; Raoul commanded them with a tiny flick of his fingers, and the blue-haired boy lay back into the other's arms, submitting himself to the beginnings of sex play.

"A recent purchase?" Iason joined Raoul on the sofa with the best view of the proceedings below.

"And an expensive one," Raoul confirmed with a quirk of his mouth. "But well worth the price. They are exquisite, and their skills are spectacular."

Iason nodded absently, watching as the blue Pet turned in the embrace, sliding down the green Pet's body. They were beautiful indeed, perfectly cultivated flowers, and knowing Raoul's taste, undoubtedly the cream of the Academy. Himself, he preferred something less restrained, less refined. Perfection was lovely, but it left no challenge.

Perhaps the businessman had been right about the idea of a mongrel Pet.

Nonetheless, they were beautiful together, the sinuous movements of their bodies as they slid together calculated to arouse the observer. For the first time since his injuries in the assassination attempt, Iason felt the stirrings of arousal in his own body.

Raoul cast him a sidelong glance with a small smile of approval. "You need the release," he said gently. "Go ahead, enjoy them. I bought them with you in mind, since you've none of your own at the present."

He nodded again, still absent, but appreciative of Raoul's gesture. He had no Pet currently. The one he'd had before had proved unsatisfactory, and - the one he'd had before had -

The one he'd had before.

A small inhalation was the only outward sign of the sudden flash across his inner vision: dark eyes, dusky skin, white teeth bared in a snarl of defiance that sent a spike of arousal through his body.

As one Pet began to service the other, Raoul cast him another amused glance. His release, when it came, left him both sated and uneasy. When he retired to his own silent flat, dark eyes and a growing suspicion plagued his mind until he forced himself into sleep.

* * *

The note appeared on his desk the next day. It was ragged and dirty and contained only two words in an uneducated scrawl.

_Dana Bahn._

The characters on the page sent a wave of fear rushing cold down his spine. He stopped for a moment, nostrils flaring, to contemplate the feeling. Blondies were not accustomed to fear. This Blondie in particular had known it only twice in his life: once the first time Jupiter had touched him, and the second -

He bowed his head and closed his eyes, his hair falling to hide his face. His memory never failed him, but all that was left now was the fear and the image of dark eyes turning away from him.

_Dana Bahn._

One thing was a certainty: the name of Dana Bahn invoked fear where no fear should be. The site had been deserted for years; what threat could it hold for a Blondie? That made one other certainty. Jupiter had tampered with his mind, no doubt through the hand of Iason's own closest confidant.

He rose from his desk and pulled his cloak around him. One push of a button brought the face of his trusted former Furniture onto his communications monitor. "Katze. I need you."

Katze simply nodded, then his face darkened when Iason told him where he wished to go. "Dana Bahn. Why?"

"I need to know what happened there, meet whoever sent this note." He stared at Katze sternly. "Unless you wish to tell me yourself."

Katze returned his look with a strange undercurrent of anger and despair. Then he bowed his head in submission until Iason clicked off the monitor. Ten minutes later Katze arrived with the car, discreet and faithful as ever.

They drove in silence. Iason watched the lights of Tanagura glitter around them as they passed, probing determinedly at the dark space in his mind. Something was there, something Raoul and Katze wouldn't speak of, something Jupiter wanted to disappear.

That meant it was something Iason very much needed to know. Or someone. Someone with dark eyes and a presence Iason either feared or feared to lose. Either way, he would not stand to have it hidden from him. Such a vulnerability could not be permitted for a Blondie, and certainly not for Iason Mink.

The car rolled to a stop just before reaching the ruins of the old rebellion site. Katze stayed in his seat, hands gripping the steering wheel until the knuckles turned white. Iason stepped out, and his gaze went immediately to the figure standing next to a pile of rubble, head dropped as though in grief, hands clenched as though in anger.

The man had dark hair, clearly a mongrel, and Iason's heart beat faster in his chest. But then the man looked up and his eyes were not the eyes Iason needed to see.

"Blondie!" the man hissed, fists clenching harder as he took an aggressive step toward Iason.

He remembered this man now. He remembered his fury and how he held the man dangling in the air as he struggled. "Guy."

"So you do remember me, you bastard." Guy stopped just outside arm's reach and spat. "They said you didn't, that they fixed your body and took away all your memories of Riki and me and everything that happened. But I didn't believe it."

Iason did not answer. His mind was racing and this mongrel did not merit his attention, this mongrel who had defied him and kept him from-

"You don't deserve to forget, Blondie scum," Guy shouted, forgetting himself and stepping closer to shout into Iason's face. "Riki went back for you, and you let him die. You can't just erase what you did to him, like he never mattered."

_Riki._

He closed his eyes against the flood of memory finally unleashed. Guy's words had triggered a meltdown of all the walls Raoul had built in his mind to make him forget Riki. Now he knew it all: his love for Riki, and in the end, the proof of Riki's love for him.

Guy's snarling voice faded like the buzz of a fly he could crush with a finger. And he almost had crushed this particular fly until Riki had begged for his life.

A single tear slipped from beneath his eyelashes. Riki had begged for Guy, but Riki was not here. He opened his eyes, seized Guy by the throat until he squawked, and flung him into the ruins of Dana Bahn.

Guy hit hard against the pile of rubble he had been next to when Iason arrived. His body bounced off the slag, flailing like a child's toy, then lay still. Iason did not know if he was dead, and he did not care. Only one thing mattered now: that Riki was dead and Iason was not, and that was not how he had intended it to be. Jupiter had brought him back from the edge of death, a protective master reclaiming a Pet. But Iason Mink was no Pet.

He turned and walked slowly back to where Katze awaited him, hands stuck in his pockets in a gesture that did nothing to conceal his clenched fists. "You remember now?" Katze asked.

Iason merely bowed his head.

"I knew you would, someday. Your mind is too strong. You would never allow yourself to forget Riki, even when you should." Katze took a deep breath, though Iason had no intention of rebuking him for overstepping his bounds. "Will you go back, now?"

Riki had walked away, leaving Iason broken and waiting for death. And then he had come back to die with his lover, the first and final proof of his love. Iason had left him there in his own turn, and now he, too, had come back.

"No, Katze," he answered. "I will not go back."

Katze nodded, his face impassive save for the strain of repressed emotion around his mouth. "I didn't think you would." He reached into his jacket pocket, drew out a packet and handed it to Iason. "I gave these to Riki."

Iason took the packet and placed it in his own pocket. "Thank you, Katze. Leave me now. Take that mongrel with you."

With a curt nod, Katze went and picked up Guy's still form, slinging him over his shoulder and walking away without another word. He would not go far, but the illusion of privacy was enough. It was all Iason had ever had.

He walked over to the rubble and seated himself more or less as he remembered sitting when Riki had returned to his side with Katze's Black Moon cigarettes. This time the cigarette lit easily, though not as pleasantly as when Riki had given him life and death in a single kiss.

One breath drew the poison into his lungs. A second made him dizzy, but in the deep part of his mind where Jupiter never left, he could hear Jupiter screaming one more time. He smiled.

 


End file.
